May You Live In Interesting Times

 

I'm sure most of us have heard that phrase. It can apply to pretty much any era, but is especially relevant now. We’re facing the most interesting of interesting times these days, a challenge for us all to stand up, stand out, and make our voices heard.

 

As writers, we’re in the unique position of being able to make our voices heard through our work. We can use our words to make a point, make the reader think, and perhaps change minds.

For me, there’s no better way to do that than with the sci-fi genre. I’ve loved writing and reading sci-fi since I was a kid. I point to my mother for sparking that interest. A big reader, sci-fi was her jam, so it became my passion too. Science fiction has a long tradition of using alien worlds or futuristic settings to comment on and put a mirror up to the foibles of contemporary society without hitting the reader over the head with the point.

 

That’s what I set out to do with my new book, The Nascent Bloom: Book 1 Caught, a YA sci-fi suspense with a class warfare/government suppression plotline. With action, and plenty of kissing.

 

Here’s the scoop: Privileged Meili and oppressed Kai are on opposite sides in a society with only two classes, rich and poor. When space pirates attack their spaceship on a school field trip, kidnap everyone on board and force them into indentured servitude on a planet far from home, they’re equals, with one desperate goal. To escape. If they can put aside their differences—and the forbidden feelings growing between them—long enough to find a way home.

 

I’ve been noodling with The Nascent Bloom for years but held back publishing until now, because the time seems right. Though, honestly, the time is *always* right for a book about standing up to tyrants and despots and fighting back against a repressive society trying to keep the masses under their autocratic thumb.

 

I point to my mother again for teaching me to stand up for the little guy. We lived in public housing in the ’60s; she was always on one committee or another fighting for tenant’s rights. Some of my earliest memories are of carrying a picket sign or canvassing the neighborhood with her to get people to sign petitions. And I always knew where to find her on election day – at the local voting precinct, helping out as a poll worker.

I guess it was inevitable I’d combine those influences to write The Nascent Bloom, the first in a series. I hope, by setting Meili and Kai’s story in a galaxy far, far away, I've been able to capture the urgency and courage teens living in these very interesting times in the here and now will need to find their footing in our world turned upside down – and fight to fix it.

Author Evie Kelley scribbles angsty Young Adult Sci-Fi and stories set in the era of mood rings, platform shoes and the eternal debate of who’s cuter, Starsky or Hutch. She also writes WWII-set historical suspense and romantic time travel adventures as Janet Raye Stevens.

Find The Nascent Bloom here